


like a fool on fire

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: First Time, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, PWP, Pre-Canon, Trans Characters, it's all good but Norrell isn't sure what he wants at first, my first pwp!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 11:50:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18872638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: Shameless self-indulgent mildly kinky nonsense.





	like a fool on fire

The knock on his door comes late; it must be after midnight, Norrell thinks, as he lays his book aside and climbs out of the bed. It had better be something important – but really, what importance would necessitate knocking on his door rather than Childermass’s? He would only wake Childermass anyway. He unlatches the door and opens it to find Childermass himself there, in bare feet and shirtsleeves, his hair loose to his shoulders and his eyes wide in the candlelight.

                “Childermass?” Norrell starts to say, but it’s lost in the way Childermass backs him into the room, closing the door behind them; the key turns with a heavy click. Lost in the look on Childermass’s face, a kind of strange, half-distant thing, and the weight of his hands against Norrell’s neck, and the aching press of his mouth.

                “John?” Norrell tries, into the bare space between them; but John’s eyes are heavy and his mouth is open and red with pressure and there’s a shiver on Norrell’s skin that makes him lean in.

                A cramped, half-broken breath and John pushes him forward again, until Norrell’s calves hit the bed. He wants, or half of him wants, to stop this, to push John back, to tell him that this is, that he hasn’t- Norrell doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want John to kiss him careful, to ask whether it’s alright that his hands are unbuttoning the placket of Norrell’s nightshirt, that the whole thin warm weight of him is pressed against Norrell’s too-soft chest.

                He wants, suddenly, exactly what he’s getting – John pushing him so he thuds onto the bed, on top of the rumpled sheets, John kneeling on the bed above him, John resting his hands on Norrell’s shoulders – John staring at him, staring and staring so long that Norrell starts to worry so Norrell does what he can and pulls, his hands with a life of their own, at the hem of John’s shirt. John blinks; he seems to come back to himself, and his eyes are no longer distant, dark and alive with something that seems all but ready to burst out of him. Norrell has no words for that look – maybe John would. Maybe anyone with experience would. All Norrell knows is that John’s hands are dragging down his chest, that his nails are digging through the linen shirt.

                His touch is steady and slightly cool, a slow drawing of his hands across Norrell’s stomach, a catch of the heel of his palm at the top of Norrell’s thigh. As he reaches where his knees press against Norrell’s thighs he lifts his hands, takes hold of his shirt and pulls it off over his head. He drops it somewhere behind him and Norrell finds himself staring John’s bare chest, at the soft brown skin caught gold in the candlelight; the tight waver of his skin over his ribs, the hollowness of his stomach, the shape of him that is not so different from Norrell after all.

He wants to say something; something that acknowledges their similarity. But John is running a hand through his hair and Norrell finds himself transfixed by the sight; by the stretch of the muscles in John’s arms, his long fingers, the untidy tangle of his hair. He looks more like himself than Norrell has ever seen him, and it should be strange but it isn’t. John shifts himself on the bed, still kneeling up; Norrell lifts onto his elbows, wanting John close to him again; but he can’t ask for John to press against him again, he can’t ask for anything – he can hardly seem to think – so he just chases him, pushing up until John’s hair is tickling the edge of his jaw

Soft light catches the dampness on John’s lip and Norrell watches the faintest, smallest reflection of the candlelight there. The corner of John’s mouth lifts, just barely, and he catches his lip with his teeth, drags slow.

The air is tight in Norrell’s lungs, and the shiver has overtaken him again; a soft, hot tremble under his skin. His elbows bow but John catches him, a hand between his shoulder blades, their chests suddenly tighter together – and for once Norrell wishes he’d had the wherewithal to take his shirt off, wishes for once that John could see him in nothing but skin; the linen between them seems strange, intolerable. He struggles away for a moment, knocking John’s arm, and John backs off the smallest bit; for a second, a frantic, horrible second, Norrell thinks John is going to get up, to leave him here – so he reaches out with his free hand, the one he’s not trying to pull his shirt off with, and catches John round the back of his neck, tugs him down into a raw, hard-edged kiss. John makes a half-swallowed sound, falling against him and trapping his arm between them; they fall in a tangle of linen and teeth and skin back onto the bed, Norrell’s nails still digging into the back of John’s neck.

John’s breath is harsh and fast, edged with a faint sound Norrell can’t read; but he’s heavy against him, and his hands are scrabbling against Norrell’s hips, looking blindly for the edge of his shirt. He doesn’t find it but catches handfuls of the fabric and pulls anyway; it catches and John laughs, deep in his chest, the only real sound Norrell has heard from him and by far the strangest, but he doesn’t care now; he’s pulled his other hand free and shoves John over, finally finds his way out of his shirt.

They’re not touching, any more; John is half-laid on the bed, leaning on his elbow, and his skin is flushed to half down his chest; he’s caught his lip somewhere in their tangle and there’s the faintest catch of blood. Norrell reaches out to wipe it away but finds himself suddenly, awfully frozen. John won’t want to see him like this, he thinks. No-one else would; no-one else ever has, not anyone who would see him for what he was. John’s frowning. He’s realising this was a mistake; he’s wondering how he can get out of this without losing his post.

                But John doesn’t walk out; he doesn’t even get up. Instead he reaches out, rests his hand on Norrell’s bare hip. Presses his thumb down on the bone, kneads back and forth, and Norrell can move again, can crowd against him, can press John back into the bed and catch his teeth against that slightest snatch of blood.

                John catches his breath; he sounds almost as if it’s too much in him, like he’s choking on it – there’s a frantic edge to the way he presses his hands to Norrell’s hips, holds him there, lifts against him. Norrell braces his hand against John’s shoulder, and that caught breath comes out of him in a low rush; his eyes drift half-closed and he shifts. That lidded look; a small, peculiar thing, too open and too closed at once. Norrell finds his hands shaking; more than anything now he wants the night to wind itself back up, for John to disappear from his bed and morph back into himself; but John lifts his gaze, looks at him with the kind of tilted, ironic, achingly familiar expression that says _well?_

                He would go, Norrell realises, if he asked. He would leave, and this would be nothing but a night’s delirium, a forgotten, balled-up thing that neither of them would ever think of again. He looks at John’s face, at his long hands that rest now on the bed, at the angular shoulders and the thinness of his hips, and he thinks – he doesn’t want John to wrap himself up again, to close off. He doesn’t want to be balled-up and forgotten; he doesn’t want to be regrettable.

                He doesn’t really know what to do, but John is still looking at him, and that expression is starting to fall from his face. He has to do something, or John might leave. Norrell swallows against the lump in his throat.

                “Kiss me, then,” he says, before he can think about it – his voice so steady it startles him, his tone so impatient he’s concerned John will take offence.

                But John doesn’t; he surges up, catches Norrell’s jaw in his hand, kisses him like – it’s hard, and there’s John’s teeth on his lip, and Norrell can’t catch his breath or do anything but try to kiss him back. John’s other hand finds his shoulder, and his nails catch against Norrell’s skin. The touch seems to start something, a hot and giddy tension in the pit of Norrell’s stomach, and it makes him push back into the kiss – he misjudges it and John loses his balance, falls back, but his hands are tight on Norrell and the kiss doesn’t break, John just half-gasping into Norrell’s mouth as he hits the bed. There’s a tremble in John’s hands as they run up Norrell’s ribs, as they twist and clutch, a restlessness to his hips, never quite still; the tremble seems to run into Norrell too, to pass from John’s fingertips, between his ribs like a knife.

                Norrell lifts himself a little, out of the kiss, and John follows him for a second before falling back and breathing hard; his hands are still pressed tight to Norrell’s skin, and his nails dig as if he’s scared, too, that Norrell might make him leave.

                “I presume you had a plan,” Norrell says, dry and flat but a little deeper than usual, and he watches in fascination as John swallows, as his hip presses up against Norrell’s thigh. He still doesn’t speak; Norrell shifts his weight so he can push John’s hair out of his face. On impulse he twists his hand, pulling just barely; John’s eyes close, his breath rushes.

                Norrell pulls a little more, and John’s eyes fly open again, dark and strangely fogged. He catches his lip with his teeth, but Norrell hears the half-choked sound he makes anyway; Norrell lets his hand slip from John’s hair, and rests his thumb against John’s mouth.

                “It’s bad manners to come into a man’s room without one,” Norrell says, and a little of his bewilderment adds injury to his tone, “He’s liable to mistake your intentions.”

                John runs his hands up and over Norrell’s back, his palms cradling Norrell’s shoulder blades. Norrell feels the press of John’s heel on the back of his calf, and a slow, gentle push of John’s hips that doesn’t seem quite so restless as before.

                Norrell, feeling strangely steady now, pushes back; John rolls his head on the pillow, stretches into the softest arch. Norrell’s thumb still rests against John’s mouth and he moves it, drags it over John’s chin through the faint stubble and down, down his neck. Kneads the skin at the hollow of his collarbone. John’s legs tighten and his hips roll, sharp and shaky enough that it feels unintentional.

                “Truly,” Norrell murmurs, “Being alone with a man in his room in this hour without some sense of what you want from him is not one of your better notions.”

                John makes a low, dragged out sound, the kind that spins through Norrell’s chest and settles in the pit of his stomach. One of John’s hands slips from Norrell’s shoulder and the next Norrell feels of it the back of it is pressed against the inside of his thigh, tight between them and pressing back and forth. If Norrell shifts right he can feel the press of John’s knuckle against him. His breath catches; a half-smile, strangely open, passes across John’s face, and he shifts his hand to press his knuckle against Norrell all the harder.

                Norrell bows his head, pushing against John’s hand. John’s shaking now, under him, just a little; Norrell finds John’s collarbone with his mouth and sucks, feels John’s hand between them break rhythm. John’s other hand digs hard into his shoulder, his nails dragging tracks. His breath has gone harsh and frantic, dragging in shallow gasps; Norrell lifts his head and sees John’s eyes wide and staring at nothing, sees the way John’s biting his lip so hard it’s bleeding again. Norrell wipes the trail away, and John makes a weak, shaking sound. He tries to push himself up, tries to twist his wrist; but Norrell pushes him back down with a hand on his chest.

                “You cannot decide on a plan now, John,” he says into the crook of John’s neck, between soft, soft bites, “You should have thought of it before.”

                “God,” John whispers, his voice sounding strange and raw; barely there, almost imaginable. He arches, slower than before, and falls back to the bed to lay there, his breath fast and shaking against Norrell’s ear.

                Norrell finds himself absently shifting against John’s hip, and John moves under him, shifts his hand back into the space between them, his fingers steady where Norrell can grind against them until his elbow gives he falls, trembling, against John’s chest.

               

 

 

               


End file.
